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This week, we will go over a practice problem from the Logical Reasoning Section of the June 2007 LSAT.
Section 3, Question 6:
Jablonski, who owns a car dealership, has donated cars to driver education programs at area schools for over five years. She found the statistics on car accidents to be disturbing, and she wanted to do something to encourage better driving in young drivers. Some members of the community have shown their support for this action by purchasing cars from Jablonski’s dealership.
Which one of the following propositions is best illustrated by the passage?
(A) The only way to reduce traffic accidents is through driver education programs.
(B) Altruistic actions sometimes have positive consequences for those who perform them.
(C) Young drivers are the group most likely to benefit from driver education programs.
(D) It is usually in one’s best interest to perform actions that benefit others.
(E) An action must have broad community support if it is to be successful.
A good plan of attack for logical reasoning questions is a simple one- read the question, identify what question type it is, plan out the answer in your head, then proceed to look at the answers. Go ahead and make an attempt at this and then come back here and we will step through how to get to the correct answer.
Solution:
We can determine that this is an illustration question, as the stem states “best illustrated”. Now, to try to come up with a sample answer in our head we can conclude that the fact pattern tells us that Jablonski donated cars to driver education programs in order to encourage better driving, which resulted in helping her business out. Answer (a) has the word “only” so this makes it a very strong statement, which should be a hint to be wary of this answer choice. In addition to this, this answer is simply wrong since the question is not stating anything about the only way to reduce traffic accidents is if driver education programs are installed. So, (a) is wrong. Next, option (b) states that altruistic actions can have positive consequences for those who perform them. In our attempt to come up with an answer we concluded that Jablonski donated cars solely to encourage better driving, and her business grew as a result. This seems like the correct answer, but let’s continue just in case. Option (c) particularly states that young drivers will benefit from these programs, nothing in our original fact pattern states this at all- so (c) is incorrect. Option (d) has another strong word, “usually” which we cannot back up with this fact pattern since we have no facts given to us that state that altruistic actions lead to benefits- so this is incorrect. Option (e) implies there is both broad community support and this action was successful. Nothing in the question give us any facts to back up either of these claims; therefore, (e) is incorrect. Option (b) is the correct answer here. Visit LSAThacks.com for additional LSAT practice problem explanations.